Day 2 of our midsummer alphabet all about looking after ourselves
The letter B
The first thing that came to mind for B was actually…be. Let’s go with that, shall we?
Sometimes everything hurts and, because we are being realistic, the pain of some experience has to be tolerated, it has to be felt and, to a certain extent, and step by step, it has to be assimilated. In that context – but perhaps really in all, for which read on – some days all you have to do is just be. On that day, just have a day. There are some days where you are so tired and in my experience it’s good for you not to look for solutions on some days if this is a possibility you can afford.
Just be, to the extent you can be, quietly, in the middle of your own life and experience. I think this is a bedfellow to acceptance, which I mentioned yesterday. Both of these tenets have been very useful to me because I am not fighting so hard. Even if I feel sad and scared, I think, ‘Well, I’ll just…kind of…be’ and somehow the world keeps turning.
Something it took me a long time to grasp was that joy can lie alongside sorrow. Sorrow does not entirely dissolve joy – even if that joy is tiny. If I can stop agitating for a bit, that observation comes more naturally to me. How about you?
Also on ‘be’, I have – I would imagine this is partly because of hyper-vigilance – always felt the need to be doing a thing. Like, if I didn’t do a thing, whatever that thing was; if I didn’t keep busy, solving, sorting and doing, then somehow the wheels would fall off. I was scared of relinquishing control and I am still a work in progress in that regard. I have found it is very good for me to do absolutely nothing for periods of time. A few minutes here and there; half an hour: ooh – an hour sometimes. I consider this training for me. My nothing needed a prompt, however, so let me tell you what I tend to do. I lie on my bed, sometimes I cover my eyes with my eye mask (nothing fancy) and then I put my big green exercise ball on the bed and lie with my legs up. I close my eyes, daydream, focus on my breathing – in for 8, hold for 8, out for 8, counting, and a few cycles of that, and what can be managed is different for everyone, and can just be regular focus on the breath to calm the system. If I feel fretful, I rather like listening to a deep rest meditation – here’s one I liked –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGrmY8OSHM&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD or try a Yoga Nidra practice, of which there are many free online. Or, on the Calm app, Spotify, YouTube or wherever, I really find binaural beats help me; this is music where tones of two slightly different frequencies are played through each ear and for which you need headphones. If you don’t like them, ditch them and try something else that you find soothing.
Most importantly about this word be. You know, we think we need so much, we think we need to do or gain or achive so much to be of worth, but, I would argue, if you are looking after others, looking after your world and looking after yourself, you need not do more. So much of the rest is a chase, an illusion; when you get ‘there’, you find there is no ‘there’ (there) and off you go again – and it can be relentless. So maybe to just be is enough?
With much love,
Bookworm
